Our Trip to the Emergency Room

Yesterday morning Mom called Dad’s doctor’s office, trying to get him some pain medicine. They did call him in some medicine, but then they also asked if we could bring him to the hospital through the emergency room, because Dad’s doctor was on call. Well, Sarah had a dentist appointment that morning, and Dad wanted her to keep her appointment. So about 2:00pm we arrived at the emergency room with Dad. (We, being Mom, Gerald Jr. and I.) I stayed out in the waiting room with Gerald Jr. so Mom could go back with Dad. Keep in mind…Dad wasn’t in ESCRUTIATING pain…but he was in TERRIBLE pain. They did a scan to check on his kidney. They found out that it wasn’t his kidney stone, for it was still in the same place as before. What!!!! Then what is it?! They decided to do a scan on Dad to see what was wrong, so they gave him some contrast, and an hour later they would be able to do the scan. They were doing this particular scan to rule out a ruptured appendix. Well, since it wasn’t they kidney stone, Dad didn’t get to see his normal doctor, because he was an urologist. A doctor came in and told Dad that his scan came back fine. Dad and Mom looked at him and told him that Dad hadn’t even HAD the scan yet. “What? You haven’t been to have the scan yet? I must have someone else’s results here. My shift is over, but I’ll give the next doctor your case.” With that he left. This whole time they hadn’t given Dad an IV, and they hadn’t given him any pain medicine in three hours. Dad is hurting real bad now. One nurse comes in finally, after about a 2 ½ hour wait, to take him down to have the scan done. By this time Dad is having an attack (jerking, face and hands drawing up, moaning in pain, etc.) Mom told the nurse that he couldn’t go down when he’s having an attack. That nurse went and got a different nurse. When she came in, she spoke to him like he was a child. “Mr. Miller, I’m going to take you down to the scan right now.” Mom, once again, told the nurse that he couldn’t go down like this. Right at that moment, Dad passed out. The nurse got out some type of smelling salts and held them under his nose. After a few attempts, he came to hollering. “Why is my nose burning?” Mom told him that he had passed out and they had revived him with salts. Dad, by this time, is begging for pain medicine. Then the nurse started up again. “Mr. Miller, you can’t have any pain medicine, unless you let us take you down to the scan. Now, are you going to let us do the scan?” Dads said, “Alright, go ahead, just give me some pain medicine.” After they took him down, Mom sat in the room and just cried. After she composed herself, she came back out to the waiting room to let me in on things. I had the cell phone, so I had to call Shanna and let her know what was going on. Shanna said that the home phone had been ringing off the hook with people checking on Dad. A lady at our church started a prayer chain for him.
After a while, I saw Mom and Dad coming out. The scan results had come back normal. The nurse told Dad that he couldn’t have any pain medicine, because there are too many abusers. It took three attempts to find out what the woman was talking about. Abusers? Does she think Dad is a drug addict? Finally she told Mom and Dad that since there were so many drug addicts that would abuse the use of medicine, it makes it hard on everybody. She said all of this very cold. They were just going to send him home WITHOUT pain meds. As Mom was taking Dad out, she asked a nurse if anyone could get an orderly to help us get Dad in the van. She didn’t get anyone. So Mom and I, neither one of us very strong, were trying to get Dad in the van. Dad was dead weight. We got him up, but then he started falling. We had to just let him go gently to the ground. There is Dad, out in the 30-degree weather, with his coat draped over him, sitting on the ground propped up against the wheelchair. I stayed with Dad while Mom ran back inside. She asked the receptionist if anybody could come and help us. A man that looked to be in his late 20’s jumped up and asked, “Ma’am, is there anything I can do to help?” He was in there with his children, I think waiting on someone already in the waiting room. Mom said, “Would you? We can’t lift him.” The man followed her out to the van, and so did two receptionists. There was a girl in the waiting room with a picture phone, and she went to the window and started videoing the scene. Mom said later that she wished that she had gotten the girl’s name and had given her our email address, so that she could have sent us the video. My brain was so scattered…if I had of been thinking clearly, I could have gotten my camera out and taken some pictures of Dad on the ground like that.
They finally got him in the van, and one of the receptionists went to get the head nurse. She came out, and was very kind. Mom started pouring everything out to her, and the lady was taking notes. When she was done, she told mom that she was going to file this as a complaint. She told Mom that she couldn’t make the doctors do anything for Dad, I mean, she wasn’t in authority over them. But she was very kind through all of this. We finally left to go home. Dad went unconscious on the way home, but I finally woke him up. Oh, Mom gave him some pain medicine as soon as we got him out to the van. We at lest had the medicine the doctor called in for him that morning. It seemed like a wasted trip yesterday. We brought him home worse than we took him in. When we got him home, Shanna, the strongest, was able to help him get in. The medicine was finally starting to work, and he lay down on the couch. He wasn’t able to go upstairs to his bed.
Things finally started to calm down after a while. We spent a total of 7 hours down at the emergency room, and it all seemed a waste. I went to bed a little past midnight. All of a sudden, I hear the cell phone ringing upstairs. I ran upstairs, and got the cell phone. It started ringing in my hand, telling me there was a voice message. I retrieved the voice mail, and it was a friend in NC, asking if everything was all right, they had just received a call on their cell. Come to find out, Gerald Jr. had been playing with the cell phone while Mom got ready for bed, and had dialed our quick access for these friends (he held down the #2 button.) That must have been a rude awakening for them…being called at 12:30 in the morning!
Well, I really need to end this post. It’s getting pretty long.
I have to keep reminding myself of Romans 8:28.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

~Gera~